Some texts on the iPhone (STOTI) is a collection of writings about Apple’s particular brand of luxury fast fashion mobile phones. As an experiment in transposing digital fabrication techniques to an otherwise more analogue, two-dimensional editorial design process, this book posits several questions about the iPhone’s role in contemporary American society as a status symbol that is so often smashed, dropped down fifty-storey buildings, and submerged in liquid nitrogen.
Made of clear acrylic sheets, the book mimics the materiality of an iPhone screen, with laser-engraved text and imagery on the undersides to emulate the phone’s compelling touch interactions that are so visceral yet intangible, confined to the flatness of the screen. Interspersed with screenshots of iPhone-wrecking YouTube videos abstracted beyond immediate recognition, the book also considers the iPhone’s creative destruction in a more romantic light.
STOTI comes loose leaf, with a bolt, washer, and nut for simple assembly.